


Back to Square One

by petrichor3145



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Actually Requited Love, Fluff, Innocent mind games, M/M, More snow, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23980075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petrichor3145/pseuds/petrichor3145
Summary: In which Tsukishima Kei doesn't appreciate Yamaguchi's flippant approach to love.“We can never go back to just being friends!”“I know.”“But—but what about square one?”Kei sighs. “If you hate me that much, you could just say so,” he murmurs, feeling the weight of his words catch up to him, making him want for breath.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 3
Kudos: 93





	Back to Square One

What is square one, and can one actually go back to it?

“Tsukki, you’re overthinking things again.” Yamaguchi is red-faced, smiling, shoving a piping-hot meat bun in his face.

Kei spares himself the trouble of removing his hands from his pockets to grab it and bites down on the suspended morsel of food. Yamaguchi laughs, delighted.

“No, really,” he says through a mouthful of bread and beef. “I want your opinion.”

Yamaguchi peers at the ground through his lashes. He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Kei wonders why his expression has grown so sober.

“Do I think someone can go back to square one?” Yamaguchi mumbles. “Yeah, probably.”

“Why?” Kei pushes, fists tightening in his pockets.

Yamaguchi’s shoulders draw up, and he buries his chin under his scarf. “Do you not?” he asks instead of answering.

Kei shrugs and turns his head away before Yamaguchi can catch the look on his face. “Not really. Too much of a hassle, trying to force things to go back to the way they were before… before. No matter what you do after you go back, you won’t be able to forget, after all.”

“You’re right, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi chuckles. “Ah… but… would you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Forget.”

Yamaguchi is all nervous energy; Kei watches from the corner of his eye as he shifts uncomfortably and bounces the tips of his fingers on his coat. They’re red from the cold and lack of circulation. Kei wishes he could reach out, touch them, engulf them in his palm heavy with warmth; he doesn’t.

“Never,” Kei says. Yamaguchi stares.

“N—never?” he squeaks.

“Never,” Kei repeats, noting idly that it’s easier to say the second time. “Like I said, too much of a pain to go back and pretend like something never existed than to just acknowledge it and get on with your life. Ignoring obvious things is stupid.”

“Ah.” Yamaguchi manages to sound like he’s choking with only a single syllable.

“What’s wrong?” Kei asks, allowing himself to stare a bit at the redness on Yamaguchi’s face; it’s really a very attractive look on him. Even if it is just because of the cold.

“N—nothing, Tsukki!” Yamaguchi assures. “I was just wondering, ah. Even if things were to… go wrong, for example if you said something hurtful—hypothetically!—to a friend, you wouldn’t take it back even then?”

“Not if it were the truth,” Kei says without missing a beat, and takes pleasure in watching Yamaguchi’s surprise melt into shock.

“But Tsukki, what if you ruined _everything_?”

“Not a problem,” Kei says to Yamaguchi’s gaping face. “If I really told the truth, they could handle it, and if they can’t, it’s their loss. Right?”

Yamaguchi is speechless.

Kei leans toward his friend. “Hey. Yamaguchi.”

Yamaguchi unburies his cheeks from his scarf just long enough to give Kei an eyeful of those soft, sweet freckles splayed out all across his face, chestnut-colored eyes wide in curiosity and wonder, chapped lips parted slightly, all the things Kei has come to associate with childhood and warmth and affection.

He tells Yamaguchi, “I don’t hang out with people like that.”

“Wh—what do you mean?” Yamaguchi asks, puffs of crystallized air flowing from his mouth.

Kei opens his mouth and takes a deep breath. “I mean that I like you, Yamaguchi Tadashi.”

Yamaguchi doesn’t move for upwards of ten seconds, and Kei wonders whether he’s finally broken him, before Yamaguchi splutters out, “Ts—Tsukki! Everything you just said—you can’t take that back now!”

“I know.”

“We can never go back to just being friends!”

“I know.”

“But—but what about square one?”

Kei sighs. “If you hate me that much, you could just say so,” he murmurs, feeling the weight of his words catch up to him, making him want for breath.

Yamaguchi’s eyes flash. “Of course I don’t!” he shouts. “Of course—of course I don’t hate you. I could never hate you, Tsukki.” As he talks, his voice peters out into a mumble.

Kei, worryingly, hears a sniffle.

Just as the biting words in his mind are about to form on his lips, because of course, _of course_ Yamaguchi is finding a way to get emotional about this even though Kei is the one baring his heartfelt feelings here, Yamaguchi reaches out and buries him in a tight embrace.

“Yama—”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t notice,” Yamaguchi gasps through his tears.

“You didn’t have to—”

“You know you can’t take this back.”

Kei, to his own horror, feels the words pierce straight through his chest this time, worse than any other time Yamaguchi has said them within the past ten minutes. He knows. He already knows he can’t take it back. Kei wouldn’t throw away their friendship over these feelings of his. But the doubt that’s starting to unfold within his chest is whispering, ‘would Yamaguchi?’ Something constricts in his throat, and he can’t breathe. He doesn’t reply.

Yamaguchi steals away from Kei’s coat, and stares. “Um. Tsukki,” he says, arms still twisted around his torso. “You’re crying.”

“So are you,” Kei hears himself say, and does nothing.

He watches as Yamaguchi wipes at his red-rimmed eyes and breathes in and out, lips trembling.

He tries to compose himself into something resembling calm, then says, “Yamaguchi, you never told me. Is it a bad thing that I can’t take it back?” His voice is thick. He wants to reach up to rub away his tears, hot and humiliating, but his arms are currently feeling about a thousand metres away from his face.

Yamaguchi eyes him incredulously, through the emotion, through everything. “Tsukki,” he whimpers, voice barely-there. He glances down at the ground, glances everywhere but at Kei, glances up. Grabs his shoulder. Leans into him and kisses him.

Yamaguchi pulls away right when Kei has just started to register the feeling of Yamaguchi’s lips on his.

“I—you—” he stutters, wishing he had gone into this whole tangent with the idea that his feelings were requited in mind. He’d simply expected Yamaguchi to acknowledge his feelings, accept them, and live with them. Certainly not _return_ them.

Yamaguchi frowns. “Was that… okay?” he asks, a hint of worry furrowing his brow.

“I—I’m not sure,” Kei says, finally getting another idea, pushing up his glasses and meeting Yamaguchi’s eyes. “You’ll have to do it again.”

Yamaguchi takes a mere second to process the words before he smiles wide and leans in again to press his lips to Kei’s. Once he pulls back, much too soon, in Kei’s opinion, it’s to cram his mouth flush against Kei’s ear and whisper breathlessly, “You know we can’t take this back. Ever.”

Kei, for once in his life, doesn’t disagree in the slightest.

**Author's Note:**

> So, thanks for reading until the end! This was based off of a prompt I found on the UChicago web page, so shout-out to whoever wrote that! Sadly I think the message got confused somewhere around the halfway point of me writing this fic, though :( . Ah well. Feel free to leave a comment below telling me what I could do better, always open for suggestions or criticism!


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